All There Is
by PepperVix
Summary: Toriel attempts to tame and rehabilitate two wild animals. The two wild animals are Sans and Frisk. There is work to be done.
1. An Exhale

Sans sighed, peering dully down at the knife now lodged in his chest. The damn kid who'd put it there sat to his right, looking about as bored as he felt.

"Nice weather we're having."

"Mmn." Frisk grunted.

Sans sighed again, rolling his eyes skyward. "I can't even be left to die in peace, now what is this world coming to?"

Frisk sat in silence for a while as Sans sat slumped against the wooden door, his breath coming in a wheeze every now and then. Then he blinked, and said. "It's snowing."

"It's _snow_din." Sans snorted derisively.

"You said, 'nice weather we're having'." He recalled. "It's snowing."

"Just trying to make conversation. It's not like _you_ were going to, after all."

"Mmn." Was the following answer.

"Can't a guy expire by his lonesome? You're killing me here, kid, no pun intended." The boy didn't respond, not even a grunt this time. "Hey, why the sudden silence? Am I boring you?"

"Not at all." Frisk replied blandy.

"Forgive me if I have trouble believing you when you say it so enthusiastically." Sans laughed bitterly.

"You're a strange one, you know."

Sans's breathy chuckles begin again, more movement than sound. "That's funny, kid."

Frisk shrugged, and they lapsed into silence again.

Sans's eyelids were threatening to slip after a particularly long gasp of silence. It was almost peaceful, even with Frisk beside him. He could hear the thrumming of his own soul in his chest, the creaking of his own bones as they shifted, his ribcage, he could hear, expanding and contracting with each heave of air into magical lungs. The quiet seemed to embrace him in a warm hug, caressing his sore bones and kissing away his bruises, singing him a soft lullaby and leading him by the hand deeper and deeper into the cold palm of death. The spell cast on Sans was broken, however, as the kid shifted beside him, flicking his cheek with two pink fingers. His eyes blinked languidly open, and he found himself almost disappointed.

"Not cool, man."

"Is this all there is?" Frisk asked, rubbing his flushed hands together, breathing a puff of warm air into his palms, then rubbing them together again.

"I dunno. I'm no priest." Sans breathed, letting his eyes slip shut.

"Wake up." He flicked him again, then again. Then again.

"Jeez, get off. You can't shank a guy to a door then expect him to hold a conversation with you, alright?"

"Hypocrite."

"Whatever."

They lapsed into silence again. Sans let his eyes droop shut once more, his breathing becoming shallower, fainter. Frisk snapped his fingers in front of Sans's face. Once, twice. No reaction. He stood up.

"See you, Sans." He uttered, wrenching the knife from the skeleton's chest.


	2. An Inhale

His sockets blinked open numbly. The sight and smells were nothing like what they should have been. He stared at the foreign ceiling for a few drawn out moments, comprehension not quite dawning on him. It felt like he was apart from his body, even as it felt the comfiness of the mattress below it and drew in the completely alien room. Warning bells signaled in his mind, a distinct sense of wrong settling on his bones like ash rain after a catastrophic disaster.

His limbs refused to move, even in their newly healed form. He didn't know if it was something physical or mental that kept him there, locked in some sort of paralysis. It broke when he heard something moving.

"Who's there?" He called, springing up.

"Oh my!" A familiar voice spoke, sounding startled. Toriel.

Sans blinked. How unlikely. So he'd managed to get out of that one, although not unscathed.

"You're awake?"

"Yes." Sans nodded, reasonably sure that indeed that was the case here.

"Good." She purred warmly, and immediately she was on him, fretting over him. "I am Toriel, I take care of the ruins." Sans, baffled, tried to roll with it as she began to lead him into the kitchen, puppeteering him down the hall and up the stairs, murmuring encouragingly all the while. She steered him into a chair, patted him on the shoulder as if he were some lost child, and wandered off into the kitchen.

"I'll just fix you something to eat. Is pasta alright? I have some leftover butterscotch pie, how does that sound?"

Sans's heart ached at the mention of pasta. He slumped against the table, sighing deeply. "Whatever." He responded glumly. Toriel went suspiciously quiet after that.

He took in the world around him dully, listening to the clang of pots and pans and the soft hissing of bubbling water from the other room. The knots of the wooden table became his entire existence as all else seemed to fade away.

Toriel set a plate heaping with food in front of him. He gazed up at her, his eyes vaguely haunted. Why is she alive? How is he still here, either?

"Bone Appétit." She smiled in what seemed to be a comforting gesture.

"I've heard that before." Sans commented, turning her smile indignant.

He figures the polite thing to do is to sit up properly, so he manages it. He takes the fork, swirling the noodles around, uninterested. He can feel her soft gaze on him, sense all the fawning and fretting racing through her mind but not out her mouth. He's grateful, it was becoming too much for him to handle.

His appetite is a swirling pit, a nebulous void, a cascade of neverending nothingness.

He was aware he was being dramatic, so he ate the spaghetti anyway. He didn't have the heart to muster up any small talk. He chewed in silence and she watched from across the table, oddly quiet herself.

"Am I ever to know your name?" She asked finally.

Sans paused, returning to pushing the food around. "Sans." He said, voice soft. She nodded happily, overly pleased by such a standard gesture. But she doesn't truly understand the weight of it. For Sans, telling her his name was still special, rare, significant even now after all he'd been through. He didn't have the courage to bring up the fact they already knew each other.

"Are you feeling well, Sans?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Good to hear. Now- em. Is it entirely polite to ask how exactly you acquired such a wound?"

"It's a reasonable question," Sans admitted.

A pause.

"You won't tell me."

"Nope."

She looked faintly affronted but covered it by adjusting her glasses. "Well then." She breathed out sharply, laying her paws flat on the table. "As soon as you're well, I'm afraid you have to leave."

"I'll save you the trouble, then," Sans announced tiredly, raising from the chair.

"W-Wait- you aren't going to stay a few days?" Toriel asked, rising from her own chair.

"Why bother? If you don't want me here, I'll leave." Sans reasoned. But nonetheless, Toriel pawed at him, guiding him back into his chair and plopping him back down.

"Stay right where you are, young man." She commanded sternly, hands coming to rest on her hips.

"You're giving me mixed signals here lady." He complained, feeling vaguely scolded as he resigned himself to the chair and the still heaping plate of pasta in front of him.

"You're not well. In fact, you won't be well enough to go out for several days yet." Sans fidgeted under her gaze, a lump forming in his throat. _Nowhere to go, anyways._

"_Yeah, _okay. Lay off, will you?" At his words she gave a small smile of satisfaction, but there was still that odd look in her eye.

"What is it?" He asked after a moment.

" I- don't know why, but - I feel there is something familiar about you. I can't seem to put my finger on it." Toriel said, and Sans suddenly becomes supremely interested in his pasta, poking at it intently and avoiding eye contact.

"Oh?"

Toriel laughed dismissively. "Just a funny thought I had. Ignore this silly old lady." She chuckled. Sans smiled fondly at her antics: Toriel was exactly how he'd imagined her to be in his head.

After the meal, Toriel helped him back downstairs, performing a small tour of the inside of her home. "I'm afraid the spare room is in somewhat disrepair. I hope you don't mind staying here for the time being." Toriel admitted guiltily as they stood in the doorway of a small, children's bedroom. Sans regarded it with mounting horror, turning

around with wide eyes.

"I couldn't-" He began, the rest of his sentence getting stuck in his throat.

"It is alright." She assured calmly, a faint note of wistfulness in her tone. "The room was only collecting dust."

Sans remained quiet, ducking his head. "If you're sure."

"I am." She smiled, patting him on the shoulder. Sans shriveled under the touch, a feeling not unlike hot tar and icky goo crawling into his heart and taking residence there. Then she left him. He stood there in the doorway, holding his breath for longer than he would like to admit.

He exhaled slowly, berating himself.

The room was alive with memories. In his head, he began to construct an idea of what it had been like to live here. He imagined grubby hands, dirt between fingernails from playing in the garden - with the flowers. The flowers that seemed to bloom from every vase in the house, their crudely drawn likenesses appearing in many of the pinned drawings. He reached out to rifle through the drawers, hungry for more information, then stopped himself. It felt wrong: like he was defiling something sacred.

Sans struggled to recall his own childhood room. As he could remember, it had consisted of a single twin sized bed, surrounded by four barren white walls. He mapped it out to himself, looking to the right. There would be his desk, where he would sit alone for hours, studying. Instead though, he was met with the beaming form of Asgore, hand in hand with a smaller scribble he assumed was the young prince. Above them in messy handwriting read: Love you dad. He stared at it for several minutes, then collapsed onto his back into the bed with a sigh.

**This has officially exceeded the ten page mark on my google doc. This is a good sign? I'll keep you posted on this strange motivation. I'll have you know I actually have an outline for this, and I have never, not once, ever had an outline before. This is the start of a beautiful relationship between me and this mysterious dame they call 'organization'**


	3. Bed of Flowers

Toriel gets irritated at first when she repeatedly finds him away from the house. She had prescribed him bed rest, forcing herbal teas, brothy soups, and other such nonsense down his throat. But after she continued to find him away from bed, she seemed to give up, likely going along with it against her better judgment.

"There you are." Sans jumped, wincing. She'd found him, even after all the lengths he'd gone through to throw her off.

"Are you psychic?"

"No, you are simply predictable." She chuckled. Sans tried not to be offended. "It is nice here, isn't it?"

He hummed in agreement, plucking a flower from the soil and twirling it around his fingers. "I've never felt the sunlight before now, you know. It's the same for lots of others - except they won't get the chance."

"Ah, I had forgotten."

Sans cast his gaze upward, watching motes of pollen glide through the air in silent reverence. "The only other place these flowers grow is in As- the king's throne room." He blushed at his slip up, but Toriel doesn't bite his head off as he's anticipating.

"You've been?" Toriel asked curiously. She's come close enough to see, but she's too proper to squat down as Sans had.

"Nah. I've just heard about it from a friend. She was-" his voice faltered and died. "She _is_ close with him." He amended, struggling to keep his tone light.

At his words, Toriel hesitated. "And- are you planning to return home soon? There must be people worried for you."

Silence. At Sans's general lack of reaction or response, she continued. "I will not be upset. I have lived alone here for many years, I have learned to adapt. I do not wish to keep you from your own life merely because of selfishness."

Sans stood, flicking the stem to the ground. "It's fine. I'm sure they can man the fort without me for a little longer."

"No- please, I said you do not need to worry-" Toriel began guiltily.

"And I said it's fine." Sans interrupted in a tone that screamed end of discussion.

They regarded each other in silence for a moment, but eventually, Toriel nodded in resignation. "If you are certain."

They left together, the warm tones of the sunshine and the soft glow of the flowers fading back to the muted blues and browns of the underground as they left it behind. For the first time since their unorthodox meeting, Sans begrudgingly let Toriel help him walk when he started to become short of breath. He felt a rush of warmth at the delighted smile on her face, but kept up the grouchy pretense anyway.


	4. A Stray Storm

It had been many days since Toriel had discovered her unusual houseguest collapsed against her door. In fact, it was encroaching on the two-week mark.

Sans was a strange monster. He was quiet at first, despondent, refusing to really speak or even to eat much. Sometimes he'd surprise her with bits of his personality she'd never seen before, but then he'd seem to somber up almost immediately afterward. He had a frustrating habit of wandering off, undeterred by her strict instruction. On occasion he'd miss multiple meals at a time then appear hours later and act as he'd never left.

Regardless of his quirks she'd grown used to the presence of the recalcitrant skeleton, rather like a stray cat who'd keep her company now and then. Despite herself and all the walls and guidelines she had built up in her mind, she was becoming slowly attached. The past week saw a weight she'd not known was there lifted from her chest.

Toriel had forgotten the comfort of companionship a long time ago.

But there were worrying aspects of his personality, too. Many things weighed in the back of her mind throughout the days. The thing that had begun to worry her the most was his insistence on staying with her in the ruins. It had been almost two weeks, and not a word from him about going back to his life. Whenever she brought it up, Sans would become frustratingly adamant and refuse to explain himself.

Toriel knit when she was thinking. Red and blue wove together, forming an intricate design of stripes. The shirt had gotten away from her, consuming the latter half of her day without her really noticing. Sans was out again, and she was thinking of Frisk, the headstrong boy who'd proven to her that he was capable of taking care of himself about two weeks earlier. She couldn't help but continue to worry. Perhaps she'd made a mistake. Only the worst thoughts seemed to come to mind whenever she thought of him.

From the other room there was a queer noise, and the bulbs seemed to flicker in their casings. Toriel stood. "Sans?" She called out cautiously. "Sans, is that you?" She padded turned into the kitchen, flicking the lights on.

"Uh, hi," Sans greeted, brushing himself off. He was covered in dust, sneezing.

"You are getting dust everywhere!" Toriel fussed, shooing him out of the kitchen. "You know better than to track things into the house," She continued. Sans, bemused, allowed himself to be dragged along. "How did you even slip by without me noticing? I must have been pretty into it."

"Where are you taking me?" Sans asked with trepidation, managing to sound like a petulant child without even intending to. She stopped at the cusp of the steps, sending him off with a small nudge.

"Go wash up. I will prepare the both of us some nice dinner," she instructed. Sans stared at her, dumbfounded. "Go on!" She encouraged. He slowly began to descend the stairs, looking up at her as if to confirm. Toriel snorted, making her way back into the kitchen.

She uncovered the stew she'd been simmering, inhaling the hearty scent. She always made enough for two. She was setting the table when Sans reappeared.

"What's that?" He asked.

"Root Stew, with fresh vegetables."

"Stew huh?" He slid into the chair across from her. "I've never had stew before."

Toriel chuckled. "Another food to add to your list I suppose. What did you eat before we met?"

Sans made a face. "The worst spaghetti you have ever tasted. Usually I-" His voice took on another quality, engrossed almost. "See there's only one joint in town..." He seemed to trail off, the warmth draining from his expression. "Anyway,"

Toriel frowned. "The stew?" She asked, changing the subject.

"Oh, yeah," Sans sat up a bit straighter. He dunked his spoon in, fishing out a few chunks of carrot and a lone rutabaga. "It's good," He reported, mouth full.

Toriel tsked quietly. "You do not have the best table manners, Sans," Toriel criticized. Sans rolled his eyes. "I mean it!" She laughed. "Proper etiquette is important."

"Alright alright," Sans grunted. "Next you'll be naggin' me about my posture," He complained.

"I've been meaning to ask actually-"

"See? There you go!" Sans cut her off.

Toriel laughed. "That's not what I was going to mention,"

"What then?"

"I was just curious, what were you out doing today? I worry you know, you are always out doing something.

Sans frowned. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

"I know, I am only curious," Toriel said hastily.

"Well, uh," Sans began, staring at her suspiciously. "I was only out exploring Home. It was dustier than I expected."

"Ah, that explains it, " Toriel smiled uneasily. "Another thing," she continued. Sans tensed a little, obviously irritable.

"I am becoming concerned about you."

"Don't-" He began, insistent.

"No, you listen. I am concerned because you continue to shut me down. I just want a straight answer."

"Look, I don't want to talk. It's none of your business."

"You are feeling well, yes? Good enough to disappear for lengths at a time. Surely good enough to return home."

"Stop."

"Sans," Toriel sighed.

"I said stop." He growled.

"You are so…" She grasped for a word to describe it. "So Difficult!" She burst out when all the frustration bubbling inside of her had become unbearable.

"Oh, I'm difficult am I?" Sans repeated in a bitter, almost accusing tone. The divide between them was only growing when all she'd sought out to do was set things straight.

"All I want to do is care for you! Why can't you see that?" Toriel ignored his words, pressing onwards in determination.

Sans looked away, his face contorting painfully. "What does that make you, my mother?" He spat out the word like poison.

"No," Toriel grit out, something inside of her breaking just a little. "And I'm not trying to be."

"Could have fooled me."

"I just want you to talk to me! I've been nothing but considerate to you. I haven't pressed in spite of the fact that you collapsed against my door!" Emotion threatened to burst from her, tightening her throat painfully. "Something you think I would have the right to know. It scares me that you could become so hurt and still refuse to talk about it-" Sans's expression became guilty, closing off already, so she pressed on, desperately adding. "And I'm not asking you to!" She hesitated. "Not yet- maybe never if- if you choose not to tell me. I suppose it is your business," She strived to keep the hurt from her voice, reminding herself he could take care of himself, reminding herself to suppress her motherly instincts.

"I know you have a life, friends who care deeply for you, family perhaps. So tell me, please, why do you insist on staying with me?"

Whatever she said had struck a nerve. Suddenly Sans had become deadly serious. "You want to know?" He snarled, sounding absolutely livid, catching her off guard. "If it's so _important_ to you, so damn _essential_, I'll tell you."

Regardless of her claims, Toriel was suddenly overcome with regret. She'd crossed a line somehow, one she didn't know if she could come back from.

"I know you think there's somethin' out there, some life I'm apparently neglecting, but you're wrong. The truth is-" He seemed to swallow his words suddenly, something painful crossing his features. "The truth is-" A hysterical madness seemed to overtake him as he exclaimed, "There's _nothing_ out there! There's _nobody_!" He faltered, breathing in sharply.

"What?" Toriel breathed, her heart skipping a beat.

"There's nobody out there Toriel. Not anymore."

There was a long stretch of silence as Toriel tried to wrap her head around his words. "Sans…" She wheezed eventually, but he turned his head away, hiding his expression.

"I'll… I'll be in my room." He said finally. Toriel didn't try to stop him.

Toriel wakes up strangely groggy. She doesn't immediately get up either.

_Sans..._

She pillows her face in her arms, turning over. She'd felt like screaming inexplicably when she walked past the children's old room last night. The door was shut, and it was eerily silent. Something roiled and kicked at her insides, wanting out. She suppressed the feeling, eventually managing to fall asleep.

She maps out everything she knew about Sans. It starts with an injured monster clinging weakly to her as she carries him away, laying him out on her bed. She heals the monster to the best of her abilities, but still he is unconscious. She fears for the monster's life. However in time the monster recovers, even finding the energy to explore the ruins. He is scrappy, moody, familiar in a way. She can tell he is hiding something.

Since last night, the timeline has become a little clearer. There was a loss, or perhaps an event that caused Sans to believe he was alone. Now, he refused to go back.

Guilt and the overwhelming need to fix things engulfed her, giving her the energy to pull herself from bed. She'd slept in later than she had in a long time.

She swallowed, knocking tentatively. "Sans, are you awake?" She asked softly. "Sans?" She chews her lip. "I'm coming in."

She stared blankly at the sight that followed. He's not there. The bed was actually made, and there were no signs of any of his belongings.

She began to knit again, worrying her lip. He'll come back, she thought. He's only out exploring again.

He doesn't come back. She pitched the shirt to the side, checking all the spots she knew he frequented.

Finally, after a few hours passed, she concluded that he'd left her. The hole that this realization created was surprising to her. The Ruins felt emptier than she remembered them being.

She stood at the precipice. Her body quivered, her mind swam. She let out a long, slow exhale. The door was tall. Official. She'd sat against it many times before, without a stray fear. Things were different now. Something had changed in her. She'd allowed the child past her, She'd allowed the injured monster within her home. Currently, thoughts of breaking her promise to herself buffeted her like an unruly wind. They urged and called out to her, only to screech and recoil when she gathered enough willpower to try. She disobeyed them, her face twisting up in almost tangible pain. _Stop!_ They nagged. _You can't! Never again! You promised!_

"I have to do this," She told them off resolutely, hand curling around the handle. "I have to." She reaffirmed, pulling.

Abruptly the noise in her head fell away.


End file.
